This application is based on Patent Application No 2000-352007 filed Nov. 17, 2000 in Japan, the content of which is incorporated hereinto by reference.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an ink jet printing apparatus and an ink jet printing method, specifically, to an ink jet printing apparatus and an ink jet printing method that can perform printing in a printing mode which takes a printing characteristic of a printing medium such as a printing paper, as a condition on performing printing
2. Description of the Related Art
An ink jet printing system possesses various advantages such as enabling a printing operation with low noise, low running cost, and high speed, as well as ease of making an apparatus small and of making an apparatus have coloring function, and then the system is broadly used in printers and copying machines or the like.
In this kind of printing apparatus based on the ink jet system, achieving both high-speed printing and high-density printing simultaneously has been a conventional and main issue. For instance, in the case of ink jet printer, a mode that performs printing of relatively high speed, which is called draft mode, is well known. This mode performs printing rather at the expense of a print quality more or less. Specifically, printing dots are thinned out at a specified rate. Accompanying this, a scanning speed of a printing head or feeding speed of a printing medium to the printing head is made larger. In the case of such high-speed printing based on thinning out, a total area that the ink dots occupy in the printing medium becomes small, and then the printed density that is realized is not so high.
On the other hand, from the standpoint of printing characteristics of the printing medium used in the printing, various proposals that contribute to the above-mentioned high-speed printing and high-density printing have been made. Generally speaking, in order to achieve high density, it is important to fix the coloring material such as dye in ink at the shallow portion near the surface of the printing medium as much as possible. On the other hand, for high-speed printing, in order to promote rapid fixing of ink, a high absorption property of the printing medium is required. However, in such a case, the coloring material of the ink will easily penetrate deeply into the printing medium in the thickness direction, and the amount of coloring material that remain on the surface will become small. Consequently, high density will be difficult to be achieved. In this way, also owing to the printing characteristics of the printing medium, printing with both high-density and high-speed has difficulty to be realized.
As apparent from the above, the printing medium that is able to retain a lot of the coloring material near its surface, and make the solvent of ink rapidly permeate so that the fixation of ink becomes good is one of the features required for solving the aforementioned conventional and major issue.
Furthermore, it is desirable from the standpoint of improving the ease of using the apparatus to execute a printing mode suitable for such a special printing medium and then realize coexistence of high-density printing and high-speed printing, as well as to realize printing for other ordinarily used printing medium that compares favorably with the printing for the special printing medium under the same printing mode at high-density printing and high-speed printing. For instance, even in the case that a user tries to print a document mainly composed of characters and intentionally selects the ordinarily used paper instead of the above-mentioned special printing medium, or even in the case that the user makes a mistake in selecting the printing medium and uses the ordinarily used paper instead, if high density and high speed printing can be realized, it is possible to always perform preferable printing correspondingly to various users such as users who do not care about the type of printing medium used, or users who positively select printing medium that matches the printing image.
The object of the present invention is to provide an ink jet printing apparatus and an ink jet printing method that can perform printing at a printing mode suitable for using a printing medium, which can retain lots of coloring material near the surface of the printing medium and which is able to make a solvent of ink permeate rapidly, and that can make the printing apparatus used easily.
In the first aspect of the present invention, there is provided an ink jet printing apparatus, which performs printing by executing relative movement of a printing head to a printing medium and by during the relative movement ejecting at least ink from the printing head, performing printing in a printing mode selected from a plurality of printing modes which correspond to different printing medium and have different relative movement speeds of the printing head to the printing medium, respectively, the apparatus comprising:
head driving means for controlling the printing head to execute an ejection in a manner that for the printing mode having high relative movement speed, an ink ejection amount per one pixel is made smaller than that in the printing mode having lower relative movement speed than the high relative movement speed, and that in a case of printing black, black ink and a processing liquid that makes the ink insoluble are ejected.
Here, the printing mode having high relative movement speed may use the printing medium that contains substantially no sizing agent but contains alumina particles.
The printing mode having high relative movement speed may use the printing medium having a permeability of 5 ml mxe2x88x922 msecxe2x88x921/2 or above as Ka value in a case of using ink having a permeation property of 1 ml mxe2x88x922 msecxe2x88x921/2 or less as Ka value for PPC paper.
In the second aspect of the present invention, there is provided an ink jet printing apparatus, comprising:
a controller that can execute a high speed absorption paper printing mode using a high speed absorption paper, which contains substantially no sizing agent but contains alumina particles or which has a permeability of 5 ml mxe2x88x922 msecxe2x88x921/2 or above as Ka value in a case of using ink having a permeation property of 1 ml mxe2x88x922 msecxe2x88x921/2 or less as Ka value for PPC paper, and an ordinary paper printing mode using an ordinary paper, respectively as the printing mode,
wherein an ink ejection amount per one pixel is made small for the high speed absorption paper printing mode than that for the ordinary paper printing mode.
In the third aspect of the present invention, there is provided an ink jet printing method, which performs printing by executing relative movement of a printing head to a printing medium and by during the relative movement ejecting at least ink from the printing head, performing printing in a printing mode selected from a plurality of printing modes which correspond to different printing media and have different relative movement speeds of the printing head to the printing medium, respectively, the method comprising the step:
controlling the printing head to execute an ejection in a manner that for the printing mode having high relative movement speed, an ink ejection amount per one pixel is made smaller than that in the printing mode having lower relative movement speed than the high relative movement speed, and that in a case of printing black, black ink and a processing liquid that makes the ink insoluble are ejected.
Here, the printing mode having high relative movement speed may use the printing medium that contains substantially no sizing agent but contains alumina particles.
The printing mode having high relative movement speed may use the printing medium having a permeability of 5 ml mxe2x88x922 msec xe2x88x921/2 or above as Ka value in a case of using ink having a permeation property of 1 ml mxe2x88x922 msecxe2x88x921/2 or less as Ka value for PPC paper.
In the fourth aspect of the present invention, there is provided an ink jet printing method, comprising:
a printing step for executing a high speed absorption paper printing mode using a high speed absorption paper, which contains substantially no sizing agent but contains alumina particles or which has a permeability of 5 ml mxe2x88x922 msecxe2x88x921/2 or above as Ka value in a case of using ink having a permeation property of 1 ml mxe2x88x922 msecxe2x88x921/2 or less as Ka value for PPC paper, and an ordinary paper printing mode using an ordinary paper, respectively as the printing mode, wherein an ink ejection amount per one pixel is made small for the high speed absorption paper printing mode than that for the ordinary paper printing mode.
According to the above structure, when executing the plurality of printing modes having different relative movement speeds, respectively, in the printing mode with higher relative movement speed, the amount of ink ejected per one pixel is made smaller than that in the printing mode with lower relative movement speed. In addition to this, at least in the case of printing black, black ink and a processing liquid that makes the black ink insoluble are ejected from the printing head. Preferably, in the printing mode with higher relative movement speed, a printing medium containing substantially no sizing agent but containing alumina particles, or a printing medium having a permeableness or permeability of 5 ml mxe2x88x922 msecxe2x88x921/2 or above for Ka value in a condition of using ink having a permeability to PPC paper of 1 ml mxe2x88x922 msecxe2x88x921/2 or less for Ka value, that is, a high speed absorption paper is used. Thereby, even when the amount of ink landing on the printing medium is small, most of the ink coloring material will be retained on the surface layer of the printing medium, and the solvent of the ink will permeate rather rapidly. Consequently, the above printing mode can realize printing with high density and high speed. On the other hand, even when the above-mentioned high speed absorption paper is not used but the printing paper such as ordinary paper is used, since the processing liquid that makes the ink insoluble is used, similar to the above case, a lot of coloring material can be retained on the surface layer of the printing medium, and a printing having high density can be achieved.